Determine the economic base of Pueblo, CO. Consult the U.S. Census of Manufacturing or County Business Patterns. To make a rough approximation of your community's basic industries, compute the decimal fraction of the nation's population that lives in your community. It will be a small number such as 0.0005. Then, find the total number of U.S. firms (or employees) in each industrial sector that is present in your community. Multiply these national figures by your local population fraction. Subtract the result from your community's actual number of firms(or employees) for that type of industry. If the difference is positive, you have identified one of your community's basic industries.